BUSINESS

Carlos Ghosn

The Rise and Fall of an Auto Icon

In a new book, two Japan-based journalists chronicle the downfall of ex-Nissan boss Carlos Ghosn.

WORDS TIM HORNYAK

The arrest of Nissan chairman Carlos Ghosn on allegations of financial misconduct in November 2018 sent shockwaves far beyond Japan’s shores.

The Brazilian-born French and Lebanese executive had arrived in the country two decades before on an impossible mission: to revive the struggling Japanese automaker and turn Renault’s 37 percent stake into a profitable alliance. “Le Cost Cutter” set about hacking, shutting and consolidating.

A year later, Nissan was back in the black. Two years after that, its operating margins were more than double the industry average. In 2016, Mitsubishi joined the Renault-Nissan alliance, making it one of the world’s largest auto conglomerates.

But all that was forgotten in the flurry of indictments, detentions and Ghosn’s extraordinary escape to Lebanon in 2019. His deputy, American lawyer Greg Kelly, was also arrested but remained in Japan to face trial.

Safe from extradition, Ghosn claimed there was a Nissan conspiracy to put him behind bars. He said he would “no longer be held hostage by a rigged Japanese justice system where guilt is presumed, discrimination is rampant and basic human rights are denied.”

But what chain of events led to the steely-eyed boss stowing away in a musical equipment crate aboard a private jet? Collision Course: Carlos Ghosn and the Culture Wars That Upended an Auto Empire, by journalists Hans Greimel and William Sposato, is a breezy, deeply researched account that attempts to explain the 67-year-old’s rise and fall.

They take up the prosecutors’ case that Ghosn—already underpaid compared with foreign peers—had a fallback plan when his roughly $20 million salary was halved in 2009 when Japanese companies had to disclose individual executive pay.

“It is difficult to assess the question of Ghosn’s guilt,” says Greimel, an Automotive News correspondent who has covered Ghosn since 2007. “He has yet to stand trial, and he likely never will. Prosecutors have yet to publicly produce detailed evidence against Ghosn, arguing they can’t because it’s still an open case. At the same time, there was clearly deep-rooted concern about Ghosn and the direction he was taking the company. But, as we write in the book, the two scenarios are not necessarily mutually exclusive.”

Sposato, a Foreign Policy contributor, notes that white-collar crime is a gray area and differs by jurisdiction.

“The part of the Ghosn case involving salary issues, now the subject of the Greg Kelly trial, was handled in an administrative filing in the US, while there were more than 60 days of hearings in a criminal trial in Tokyo,” he says.

One of the biggest challenges the authors faced was the speed at which the story evolved.

“So far, there is no closure to the scandal for any of these parties,” says Greimel, who will discuss the book together with Sposato at the Club this month.

Ghosn is reportedly preparing a legal counterattack to clear his name. But how will it all end?

“Few would have guessed the various turns in the saga so far,” Sposato says, “and with someone like Carlos Ghosn now sitting and fuming in Lebanon, it’s fair to say we have not heard the last.”

TAC TALK: HANS GREIMEL & WILLIAM SPOSATO  October 27  7–8pm  ¥1,650 (online: ¥550); guests: ¥1,980 (online: ¥660)  Copies of Collision Course available for ¥3,600  Sign up online